The First Report from Chiapas on the First Day of the Other Campaign
January 1, 2006
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Concepción Villafuerte files the first report today from the first day of the "Other Campaign," the Zapatistas'
ambitious tour of the entire Mexican Republic. So begins the reporting of the Amado Avendaño Figueroa Brigade, formed
last month to provide an other kind of journalism to cover the Other Campaign.
Villafuerte writes:
"And so, the Other Campaign kicks off on January 1 in colonial San Cristóbal de las Casas, the city that was taken over
on January 1, 1994 by some two thousand masked, armed, and defiant indigenous men and women, who from the balcony of
city hall sent their message of war to the federal government.
"Twelve years later, with their numbers multiplied, it is hoped that they return peacefully to take to take the streets
and avenues of this small city that, due to winter vacations, is full of Mexican and foreign tourists, in addition to
the adherents to 'the Sixth' who could pay for the trip to be present for the start of the Other Campaign from the
cathedral plaza of this city."
...
"Here in San Cristóbal de Las Casa, the first talks were held in the Cathedral. The fact that Bishop Samuel Ruiz García,
or Tatic as the indigenous call him, had proposed and accepted that then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's
representative and the Zapatista delegation headed by Subcomandante Marcos meet to negotiate peace accords in the San
Cristóbal Cathedral, was denounced as an outrage to authentic 'Coletos' (a local name for the city's conservative non-
indigenous community). These unleashed their fury by creating a spontaneous, short-lived organization that never had a
formal structure, led by then-Mayor Jorge Mario Lescieur Talavera. The violent group attacked the Bishop's house a year
later, threatening to burn it down. At that time, current Mayor Sergio Lobato García was among Lescieur Talavera's
followers, and he drank a good quantity of alcohol that night to give him the strength and courage to shout
incoherencies in front of the Cathedral.
"These passages, now part of history, will repeat themselves, but in a different form..."
Read the full report, and all the latest reporting from the Amado Avendaño Figueroa Brigade, at this special page in The
Narco News Bulletin:
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin